JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Members of the Jacksonville City Council and the Duval County School Board meet Thursday morning to discuss a long list of topics including the current state of public schools and the search for a superintendent.
The goal of the district remains to have a new superintendent in place by Jan. 2024 after Dr. Diana Greene officially retired last month.
School Board member Kelly Coker said the district has started meeting with the Florida School Board Association, the consultant that will be conducting the nationwide search. The goal is to bring in candidates by November or December, but that timeline could change depending on the quality of the applicants.
“If you are tracking the news in the state of Florida there have been a lot of openings for superintendents. We are blessed that we have Dr. Dana Kriznar right now, and so we will be looking at the quality of candidates to ensure that they are of the caliber that we need to lead our students moving forward,” Coker said.
The school board plans to meet next week to talk about how to get the community engaged in the hiring process, which will include electronic surveys and in-person meetings.
The district also said it set up a website to keep the public updated on the search and board members plan to meet next week to talk about the next steps in the search process.
Another topic during Thursday’s meeting: focusing on improving the literacy of students.
“Literacy has been a concern for the district for a number of years and so that’s where the bulk of our attention will be going. Since the community seems to be coalescing around that issue, it’s just, it’s the time. This is Duval’s time,” Interim Superintendent Dr. Dana Kriznar told News4JAX.
DCPS Chief of Schools Scott Schneider said two ways to do that are to recruit and retain the best teachers and make sure students show up for school.
He said 36,000 students missed 20 or more school days last year.
“That’s a significant number of students, for many different reasons, but we know with the best teachers inside of our classrooms we can still not be successful unless we get our students there, so we are focused on that,” Schneider said.